18 Jun 2017

I hope the sun is shining with you today. I have upcycled this little watering can and filled it with beautiful blooms!, butterflies, and bees!

As the watering can had a layer of existing paint, I used sand paper to throughly scratch the existing paint. This provided a better surface for a layer of Steam Whistle paint to adhere to the metal.

When the paint was drying I stamped 20 flowers from the Victorian Garden set. I used watercolour pens directly on the stamps so I could add green for the leaves and two coordinating colours for the flowers.I fussy cut the flowers leaving a little tab underneath them. I cut a piece of dry oasis to fit into the watering can, and pushed my flowers into it.

The butterflies and bee stamps are too large in relation to the watering can, so I stamped them onto shrink plastic.After shrinking I coloured them with Luscious which I had mixed with a little bit of water.It gives them a lovely gleam and sparkle!

I adhered the butterflies and bees onto some silver wire which I had curled around a pokey tool to give it more stability. The butterflies and bees happily flew into the flowers and I pushed the wire into the oasis.I also added some dried lavender amongst the flowers, to give a lovely aroma.

I cut a circle out of some chipboard which I recycled from the backing of a watercolour pad.I adhered the watering can into the middle of the circle, and covered the remaining chipboard in Indigoblu texture paste.

I pushed some wired bees and dandelions into the texture paste. When dry I painted the texture paste with Olive Waistcoat paint.

I hope I have inspired you to upcycle your treasures using the wonderful Indigoblu stamps. You can see lots more inspiring Ideas created by the fabulous Indigoblu Design Team on the blog.

1 May 2016

For the canvas I used a chipboard backing from a paper pad and coated it with gesso.

I glued layers of tissue paper on the top part of the canvas. When dry I used watercolours on top of the tissue and then stamped the sentiment. The remaining canvas was coloured with dye inks and splattered with watercolours.

I made the flowers with strips of fabric which I rolled around and around into a circle. Some twisted green net became its leaves.

I finished by adding a little sparkle and some cross stitches in a silver thread.

Thank you for visiting.

Please take a look at all the fabulous projects from the Mixed Media Design Team we have a fabulous guest Designer this month Ingrid. I hope you will join in with the challenge this month, have fun!

1 Apr 2016

I recycled an empty hinged tin of mints to make this fun little scene.

I started by lining the tin with card, I used some off cuts from some bleeding art tissue backgrounds which I had made a while ago. There are so many pretty papers available that the possibilities for creating the background are endless.

I chose this set of little silhouette stamps for my scene.

I stamped them all in black archival ink and carefully cut them out, but leaving a little tab on the bottom of them to glue to the grass later.

I cut a strip of card slightly longer than the width of the tin and fringed it to look like grass. I folded each side edge of the card and glued it to the inside side of the tin. I used two strips of grass, and then added the silhouettes onto the grass strip.

I die cut a tree branch and flowers, and glued the branch into the top of the tin and adhered some flowers. I stamped a sentiment on the lining inside of the lid.

I decided to use decopatch papers to cover the tin. Apparently you are meant to use expensive decopatch glue, but I have found that Pva glue works fine for me.

There are so many different scenes you could create inside of a little tin, why not give it a try!